Chevy Volt->Bad For GM->Bad For US Energy Supply

IBD/The Lid ^ | 8/14/09 | The Lid

[FreeManWhoCan]

The Chinese made BYD E6 goes 249 miles on one charge. It can charge 50% in 10 minutes. They will be here in 2011 and I read that Warren Buffet has invested in the company. This is the car that they need to watch out for if they want to compete.

http://www.byd.com/showroom.php?car=e6

[normanpubbie]

I'm embarrassed.

My quote for the total electricity production in the U.S. was off by a factor of 1000 because I misread the data. So let's use the government's figure of 4.16 billion MW-hr which you cited as the total energy production in the U.S. for 2007.

Let's look at your 45 KW number. That is the maximum rated output of the battery/wheel motor combination and has nothing to do with the 16 KW-hr power used to get 40 miles down the road.

BTW, 40 miles per day times 365 days per year works out to 14,600 miles in a year, which is reasonable for a passenger vehicle.

So my electricity usage of 6.205 MW-hr per vehicle per year is still good. That amounts to 1.8 billion MW-hr for all 300 million hypothetical Chevy Volts. The 1.8 billion MW-hr represents 40 percent over the 2007 electricity production number, not 120 percent.

Assume every one of the one million Priuses built by Toyota is operating today. That is still a far cry from getting 300 million electric vehicles on the road, which will take decades.

Note that electrical power generation country-wide increased just 9 percent between 2002 and 2007. This country has put off increasing its power-generating capacity due primarily to challenges from environmental activists; the grid is pretty close to being maxed out now. And while there are a lot of people sincerely concerned about technology's impact on the environment, there are also a lot of enviro-wackos out there. The second group seems to have the upper hand right now, but that could change rapidly.

[RobRoy]

Coal rattles around too much in my tank.

I bike commute a lot and drive as little as possible. That Tesla thing is the only even partly electric car that has me interested. The price has to come down to less than half of what it is now, but then, I used to Sell simple Sony CD players for $1,299, so it’s only a matter of time. :)

[Kackikat]

If the car only goes 40 miles before it has to be recharged, then over 200 mpg is bogus information, since electric costs have to be factored in. Forty miles is NOTHING for me, it would be a waste of time.

[Kackikat]

You got it.

[Kackikat]

Although that is better, what do you do if you get over 120 miles from home...it’s just to iffy to suit me. If you live in town, and only use it for that, fine. Travel would be horrible.

[Kackikat]

Comment#7 said it goes another 200 miles with gas, after 40 with electric. So going to beach is 300 miles, so that means I would need at least 2 or 3 charges to finish getting there and back, unless it lets you go on gas only...then what kind of gas mileage does it get?

[Fingolfin]

It has a small internal combustion engine to recharge the battery that powers the electric motor. At all times though, the car is powered by the electric motor. It can be used just like a normal car by filling it up with gas and never plugging it in. In that regards there in no range difference between the Volt and a regular car, except that the Volt doesn’t have an ICE (internal combustion engine) connected to the drive train and gains massive efficiency boosts because ICE are terrible energy wasters. Electric motors are fast, clean, and actually regenerate energy from things like breaking.

We all hate the GM fiasco, but the Volt really is awesome technology. What should have happened with GM is the Volt technology should have been sold off to someone who can make it profitable, and we should have sensible energy policy including tons of nuke plants to power these cars.

The best part is sticking it to the Muslims by not needing their oil.

[Kackikat]

Is it possible they took over GM for that technology...and we will still have to buy oil?

[normanpubbie]

I think GM shot itself in the foot by making this bogus 230 MPG claim. It ain't happenin', people.

To truly evaluate the Volt you need just three numbers: The capacity of the battery, the distance it travels just on battery, and the MPG it gets on gasoline only. Ignore the top speed and acceleration claims, unless you are a speeder who peels out at every light. And the max power claims? Who cares?

Occasionally FReepers post articles on technical and scientific subjects. But you can be led down a primrose path pretty easily, especially if you are uncomfortable with numbers. So how do you tell if someone is selling you a technical Brooklyn Bridge? The way I recommend is to look at specs and closely examine those that seem way high or way low.

FMWC, here is my evaluation of your BYD compared to the Volt. Four specs for the BYD immediately jumped out. First was the battery range (249 miles). Way high. Volt specifies 40 miles. Second was the curb weight (4453 pounds). Way high. The Volt's curb weight isn't given, but I figure 2700 pounds is a reasonable number. I call these unbelievably high values "highballs."

No doubt some poster will claim that the car is so heavy because the battery weighs (literally) a ton. Maybe that's true. But I want to get myself from Point A to Point B, not the battery.

Now let's look at two other specs. Although they don't give the battery capacity directly, we can calculate it from their spec of 18 KW-hr for 62 miles which works out to 72 KW-hr for the 249 mile range. I think BYD is "lowballing" the discharge rate, just as GM tried to do with the Volt -- GM claim 25 KW-hr per 100 miles, real number 40 KW-hr per 100 miles. But I'll accept the BYD number.

But the biggest whopper is BYD's claim that they can recharge the battery 50 percent in 10 minutes. Two problems with this. The BYD site claims that you can recharge the battery from a 220 volt, 10 amp electric service. That's a 2200 watt charge rate, folks. At this charge rate, it's going to take 16.5 hours to recharge the battery 50 percent, not 10 minutes! But there is a more serious problem. Batteries heat when you charge or discharge them because they have internal electrical resistance. At the 16.5 hour charge rate, they probably use a radiator to cool the battery like the Tesla does. But charging the first 36 KW-hr (50 percent of the capacity) in 10 minutes would require so much current that it would turn your battery into a crispy critter.

But for some FReepers, the more outlandish the claims, the more readily they will believed. Human nature, folks.

[FreeManWhoCan]

The Chinese say they have some new kind of battery called the Fe. Do you know what it is? I am only repeating what they are stating in their website. Are they full of it and are only doing it to compete? I wouldn’t be surprised....

http://www.byd.com/showroom.php?car=e6

[Rembrandt]

“..everyone except, oil companies, Tirpo, and Arabs,
wins with the electric car
which one are you?”

I’m just your avg tax paying consumer in Florida. Who are you, Muhammed or is your name Barack?

[normanpubbie]

BYD is owned by a company in China that produces batteries. "Fe" refers to their lithium-ion iron phosphate battery. It supposedly has some improvements over the lithium-ion cobalt phosphate which is the traditional lithium-ion battery technology used in laptop batteries, etc. We'll see.

Incidentally, as you noted in post #41, Warren Buffett reportedly owns 10 percent of BYD stock.

According to one Web source, BYD has built just 80 of the E6 model, about the same number as completed or in-production Chevy Volts. So both companies are still in prototype mode.